Steam Next Fest - June 2025 edition is live with new demos

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3677220/The_Demons_Told_Me_to_Make_This_Game_Demo/

The Demons Told Me to Make This Game is a Time Loop game and a cosmic horror narrative adventure about demons, monsters, evil cults, bloody rituals, and Elder Gods.

You play as Dark Wisp, a disembodied spirit who is unable to interact with the physical world directly, but instead can possess people and speak into their ears, influencing their behavior.

Your hosts have agency and will keep trying to act on their own accord, but you mustn't let them do that. They're dumbasses, and without your help they will imminently perish. Fortunately, you have control over the flow of time, so you can undo their stupidity whenever you want.

Make choices. Experiment. Explore different timelines. Learn what you need and help your hosts survive. After all, they're the ones destined to save the world.

Works great via Proton, and Steam Deck compatibility is promised for the release version. I have played the demo and liked it very much, waiting for the release.

omg yes!! Love a good nextfest :) Are there just a ton more this time around than last time, or am I just imagining that?

omg yes!! Love a good nextfest :) Are there just a ton more this time around than last time, or am I just imagining that?

After I enabled Proton by default few years ago, there has been more than you have time to play. I couldn't find any actual numbers for each year, but this year doesn't seem to be making any records. Might be just the new normal.

I played two demos today, both enjoyable, but neither caused urge for immediate wishlist.

Rentlord: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3546440/Rentlord/

Rentlord is Balatro inspired "deckbuilder". Instead of cards, you buy properties and collect rent. There are multipliers and jokers (though game calls them plugins). There's bit less randomness as without plugins the profit would be static. Demo gives you a taste, but hopefully final release has lot more content.

Wander Stars: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575810/Wander_Stars/

Wander Stars is vaguely deckbuilder like game with anime theme. Anime theme is even followed by re-using same animations, which was back in the day used for budget reasons. Though at least animation looks gorgeous.

It's built around the cliche of shouting movement names before doing them. In Wander Stars the movement names are actually constructed from verbs and adjectives and they each have slightly different function. In overall it's maybe slightly too simple after you understand how everything works (it's bit more complicated than what I explained). But at least map view has other things than battles and plot while not highly original has potential for some drama later on.

Kind of still on the fence adding it to wishlist.

Tried five:

Quest of the Hero (Native): Hard to explain, in no small part because the mechanics are not explained at all. A lot of the game doesn't make that much sense at the start, but it seems like you make a bunch of choices, either safe ones which raise a "doom gauge" or ones that hurt you but give better rewards. Most of the damaging ones have damage to health or a stat over time, but not *real* time so no idea what that even means. Advise skipping this one.

The Drifter (Native): Pixel art point and click in the classic style, about a homeless man caught up in a violent conspiracy, but somehow able to return to moments before each successive death. Good premise, well communicated and grabs the player right away without a lot of laborious setup. Demo is very short, but enough to communicate the key features. Recommend.

Bloom - a puzzle adventure (Native): No Linux executable. Runs with forced Proton. Apparently personification of Mother Earth is being bullied by personifications of Jupiter, Saturn and...Pluto, for some reason? Which causes smog? It doesn't make much sense, and honestly it doesn't matter. Simple puzzles with a colourful style. Doesn't especially grab me but maybe this is for somebody.

AbstractPunk (Native): Oldschool FPS with an eyestrain-heavy collage style, where you're an office drone on a mission to deliver a message to a high-powered executive. Your weapon is a cutout of a woman who shoots happiness, while your enemies shoot sadness back at you. Very weird, very stylish, very confusing, VERY hard on the eyes. Seems kinda good though?

Black Hole Fishing (Native): Simple incremental about a fishing pond, except you're not using standard methods like hooks or dynamite, but a tiny black hole instead. At first you scare them in using your hookless bobber, but soon you've got a stronger hole and multiple auto-restockers to make that unnecessary. Not much content so far and the graphics are extremely basic, but the idea is pretty amusing.

Fire more:

Into the Grid (Native): Cyberpunk netrunning deckbuilder. Basically a dungeon crawl in neon, but it looks very nice. Plays well too. A bunch of different directions to build your deck and the card art is good. Recommended.

Gloctopus (Native): Great idea, an octopus with guns! Practice, not so much. A side-scrolling twin stick shooter that's hard to aim, and there's no indication when you actually hit an enemy, other than them vanishing after a couple of shots. Minus points because you just bounce off walls instead of scuttle along them. Also don't like the gunshot sounds. Needs more time in the oven.

Thysiastery (Native): Another "Linux" game that has no Linux executable. Runs with forced Proton. Legend of Grimlock style dungeon crawler with monochrome pixel art. Runs quite well and the vibes are immaculate. Some oldschool roguelike elements, randomly generated characters and maps, turn-based, and permadeath, but not things like mystery potions and the like. Closer than most in that regard. Recommend.

Witchy Business (Native): Cute magic shop management sim. Surprisingly hectic as soon as the tutorial is over and generally needs balance, but otherwise fine. Cat character kind of annoying.

Wirelight (Native): Right away the music is a groove. Weird little puzzle dungeon crawler with a low-res pixel art aesthetic. For some reason movement is on arrow keys, but that does play into precise directions as a mechanic so I'll allow it. Very cute, puzzles are intuitive, and commands are always on the screen so you don't have to keep track of everything. Recommended.

And five more! This time with Proton!

OFF Prologue (Steam Play): What can I say? A surreal classic that's inspired a wealth of other games, most notably Undertale/Deltarune. The story of The Batter and his holy mission to purify the land, and the weird things he encounters along the way. The demo is basically the tutorial and Zone 1, so a decent amount of content. And did I mention the music is ridiculously good? Recommended.

A Game About Cutting a Tree (Steam Play): Just what it says on the tin. If you've seen A Game About Digging a Hole, it's basically a knockoff of that (different dev so assume shovelware). I assume by the end you're eaten by beavers or something. Runs okay, but not great. No FoV settings so I could only play it for a very short time before I started feeling it, so that's the end of that.

Growmancer (Steam Play): Kind of an incremental game, but not about automation. You play as this Groot-lookin' dude running around a desert, and grass springs up where you walk. The trick is you have to run over it a second time to turn the grass green, which in turn spawns flowers. Green grass and various kinds of flowers becomes your currency, and all the upgrades revolve around becoming better at growing stuff. Very short ~40 second runs, with upgrades that add fractions of a second onto that total. Recommended but it does get a bit old so restrict it to short playtimes.

MIO: Memories in Orbit (Steam Play): This one's really good. An action platformer where you play this tiny android exploring a gigantic spacecraft in ruins. Very Hollow Knight vibes in the sense that your opponents are other bots gone mad, but the style veers off in a much different direction of grandeur gone to ruin. The intro sequence is stylish as hell, and the attention to detail in environments and animations is amazing. Highly recommended.

Isles & Tiles (Steam Play): Puzzle/City Builder where you draw cards that have a variety of resource costs to construct buildings, and create the land to put them on as well. Pretty frustrating early on because it's hard to get your industry running due to not having the resources that industry is meant to create. Also got a BAD case of that Unity jank, so be prepared for that. There's the bones of a good game in here, just needs a few tweaks here and there.

Had time to play few. Downloaded also few recommendations, but haven't gotten to them yet.

I'm trying to play demos in order I installed them in order to avoid getting distracted. Usually I have plenty of leftover demos that I have never played and probably never will.

Replicat
In short it's memory game rogue-lite. There's lot that's borrowed from Balatro. There's gameplay loop of meeting target score, boss fights with modifiers, modifying cards with essences.

Difference to traditional memory game is that by default there's several same pairs, so it's bit more likely to find matches. But of course you can slowly modify the deck to your liking.

Good fun, though there's another that's quite similar: Matchstone.

Matchstone
Most of the things that apply to Replicat apply to Matchstone too. Main difference is that Matchstone has gray quite simplistic theme. Also joker analogue is quite simplistic as there's no choice what you can get. Getting new tiles with new functions is pretty cheap though and you can increase the tile category value.

Tiles have maybe can have more wild features than I saw in Replicat, but all in all Matchstone feels bit more boring. Maybe it's the gray plain feel, but it could also be generally making things look and sound satisfying.

Still, could be fun for somebody.

Insider Trading
It's kind of Balatro meets stock market. The stock market part is bit weird and could maybe explained better with the tutorials. I was first confused about the different animal icons and though they were different stocks. It all makes sense, but it takes maybe one failed run to see all the mechanics clearly. It does work like shorting in real stock market that you buy when stocks and sell when they're high, it just took a moment to figure out how to apply that in the game.

Could spend lot more paragraphs explaining the mechanics. Good variation of the theme that changes things around enough that they things feel different. Maybe missing some of the fun factor, but it's not totally obvious what would fix it. Still worth trying out if you have some patience figuring things out on your own too.

Become the Moon
Become the Moon describes itself as deck building auto battler, which kind of explains it. Basically gameplay loop is that you play cards that can be minions, spells or battle spells. Spells usually give some kind of bonus to minions, but there are other kind of spells too. Battle spells are spells that play during battle.

Once you end your turn, battle spells trigger and minions fight to the death. Ones that survive attack opponents mastermind (don't remember what term the game used). If mastermind is still alive after that, both master minds fight to the death. If player wins, there's few rounds of rewards and everything repeats. That's the high level view of it.

Cards do have all kind of different ones that have synergies and/or modify the game rules somehow. On top of that cards can be discarded, deleted or exhausted. So pretty common deckbuilder stuff, maybe with just bit changed naming.

It was fun enough, that I might try the demo again.

Spinny Dungeon
This one is easy to compare to Luck Be A Landlord as it's slot machine rogue lite. And there are similarities, but few differences that go nicely along with the dungeon theme. Like enemies that move between rows towards you. Also instead of paying rent, you just have to stay alive. Which you can't do if you starve (there's hunger meter). Mana helps also and money helps too (not sure what happens if you run out. So you need all kinds of symbols to stay in balance.

For protecting your health bar, there's weapons and for healing some rare symbols and spell. For hunger meter there's food, for mana there's at least scrolls and mushrooms. For money I don't remember anything else than gems, but there must be some default symbols too that I forgot.

Also there's the usual symbol synergies. Some delete the other symbols, some transform other symbols. Some get even improved when they get to transform or delete.

Feels different enough to the inspiration and pretty good fun.

Sunken Engine
I left this one as last as dishonorable mention. First of all I didn't check the mention of AI usage, but there seems to be bit more to it than that, which is a shame as developers might otherwise be onto something.

What irks me a bit that they take bits out of Dredge bit too directly. Red eyes everywhere is straight from Dredge and the AI generated NPC:s ooze so much Dredge style that I would have to do side by side comparison.

It's nautical themed cleaning simulator with some ship repair and shopkeeping thrown into the mix. With some horror elements thrown in.

I guess this one is rare don't touch so it stays sunken.



Forgot to mention Watchword and The Drifter. I played Watchword before the event started and what probably killed it for me is that I started optimizing it to death. The crossword format gives so many options that going through them all takes lot of time. Also it accepts some nonsense words, which means there urge to try some random stuff just in case. Should try out Wordplay, which AFAIK is bit more simplistic.